Boys, We'd Better Bring This to Extra Innings (2)
"...So we scraped and clawed our way to a run, and in the end it barely changed anything?"
Noh In-seong slumped on the dugout bench, spitting out his grievances.
Bottom of the sixth. One run — the price paid for sacrificing two outs with the leadoff man on base.
The opponent was still stuck at two runs, sure, but as things stood, they were going to lose by one either way.
"Shouldn't you be going up there and hitting a home run or something? Get out there and show us something!"
Song Jin-wook had a point. The message, loosely translated: isn't the team's top hitter supposed to produce when it matters?
But Noh In-seong flipped it right back on him, and somehow made it sound even more reasonable.
"I'm a rookie. When a rookie wobbles, isn't it the grizzled veteran's job to bail him out with all that experience?"
...This from the same shameless punk who trash-talked his own direct seniors on a daily basis and swore like a dockworker?
The moment everyone's thoughts converged into one, Sung Hyun-tak — the last out of the eighth — trudged back to the dugout with a hollow look on his face after striking out.
"That lunatic's still throwing gas."
J-Lo was treating the mound like his personal kingdom, mowing down the opposing team's bottom of the order on his way back down the hill.
Top of the ninth. For the Doubles, it was time for their final defensive stand in regulation — an inning they absolutely could not give away.
Caleb had gamely held the line through eight, but at 114 pitches, there was no way he could take the mound again.
He would have to content himself with a utterly dominant start — eight innings, two earned runs.
"...You boys. Whatever it takes, you're erasing this loss for me tonight."
The sorrow of having to worry about a loss after bleeding that much onto the mound.
It was the baseball equivalent of a well-known disease: I pitched a gem, but the team couldn't digest it.
While Caleb headed down to shower first, the team's trusty setup man, Cho Hyo-jin, took the mound for the second day in a row.
"Yesterday it was the eighth, and today you're asking for the ninth? Is this what happens when we're losing?"
For a man who wanted his designated innings and designated situations, this was not an appearance he'd asked for.
"...Still. One run down. If I shut this down and we come back..."
Games like this didn't come along often for a manager. The gap was too narrow to surrender.
Even if it meant earning the humiliating nickname 'Burning-the-Bullpen' Jeong Im-taek, he wanted to win today's game.
Was it a testament to the setup man's quality, or simply that the opposition's lineup was equally listless?
With a visibly weary Caleb out of the game, the comparatively fresh Cho Hyo-jin was nasty.
Even after throwing an inning the day before, his stamina held — low-scoring pitching duels meant plenty of rest in between.
A riding two-seam fastball touching 155 km/h out of a high three-quarter arm slot, backed by a changeup nobody wanted to see.
"Strike three! Batter out!"
[It fooled him completely — that was the splitter. His changeup's fast too, so there's barely any velocity gap between the two.]
[From the batter's box, having two pitches that drop on completely different planes has got to be infuriating.]
Between the changeup and the splitter falling the opposite way, batters' bats were whirling like windmills.
With two outs, Jeong Han-sol at least managed to slash a hard grounder up toward the pitcher's mound.
[Chopper toward the mound! It caroms off the mound toward center! Noh In-seong dives and gloves it! Toss to Sung Hyun-tak!]
[Sung Hyun-tak fires to first — he's OUT! A picture-perfect play! Three outs, side retired!]
Noh In-seong had gone quiet at the plate, sure — but in the field, he was flawless.
He snagged a ball that was kicking away from him mid-dive, and since a throw from a full-length dive is nearly impossible, he flipped it with his glove instead.
And then there was the magic of him staring Sung Hyun-tak down with a face that said drop that ball and you're dead — somehow making the throw's trajectory dead-on perfect.
"...Hey, why are you staring at me like that? You're scaring the hell out of me!"
"We're losing, so I'm just in a shit mood. That's all."
Noh In-seong jogged back into the dugout with a face carved from stone.
The ninth, an inning they absolutely had to hold, was over. The last chance had arrived.
The leadoff hitter was Noh In-seong.
Noh In-seong stepped into the batter's box — but the hitting stroke he'd shipped off to America wasn't about to choose this exact moment for a triumphant homecoming.
Today's contributions had come on the bases and in the field; at the plate, he'd come close to homers, and only close.
Well, he hit it hard, that's something. In baseball, they call that a moral victory, which is to say, no victory at all.
"Whew..."
"Is this punk actually nervous? This is the guy who used to crack jokes at my expense like it was nothing?"
Jeong Han-sol's mildly incredulous reaction captured the strangeness of the moment perfectly.
Noh In-seong was, genuinely, nervous.
If we lose today, that doped-up bastard gets to lord it over me. Stuck with the 'he got owned' label. I can swallow anything else, but not that.
It was a tension pointed in a slightly different direction than the team's fate — but nervous was nervous.
Noh In-seong took the first pitch for a called ball.
However much muscle J-Lo had packed on in a chemically enhanced state, he was still human.
Even Caleb had come off the mound in the eighth with the admission that another inning was beyond him.
So how much velocity did J-Lo have left, now firing pitch number 124?
"Strike!"
"...Whoa, you insane son of a bitch. He's got some serious juice left in the tank."
The answer was: down a notch, but comfortably still sitting 147 to 150 km/h.
His velocity had dropped about 7 km/h, and his command was scattering instead of painting corners like earlier in the game.
But for Noh In-seong, whose hitting form had degraded this badly, even that was a tall order.
Crack—!
He squared up the third pitch, and the ball skittered down the third-base line.
[Ground ball in front of third... oh! He bobbles it as he makes the grab!]
[Looks like we might have a review situation here! The throw from third to first—!!]
Noh In-seong's foot and the ball arriving in the first baseman's glove landed nearly in the same instant.
But in that sliver of a moment, the umpire's mind turned to what he knew about Noh In-seong's legs.
Isn't that kid faster than his big mouth suggests? And the third baseman fumbled the transfer, didn't he?
As evidenced by the countless players throughout history who had pulled 'kihap-stuffed pranks' on the strike zone, bias — and especially bias toward a player known for running his mouth around the league — could sometimes blur a call.
"...Safe!"
It was the first time Noh In-seong had ever been granted the superstar call — the generous ruling reserved for star players only.
Naturally, the first baseman who caught the ball and J-Lo, who'd thrown it, both erupted.
"FUCK! His foot was late! Blue, come on!"
"The ball got there first! That's a blown call!!"
But the Grizzlies' manager couldn't even look his players in the eye. He just dropped his head.
...Of all the times...
A team gets two video replay challenges per game.
Until extra innings arrived, they had no more right to contest anything.
"Didn't I tell you? You really want to waste a precious challenge on that?"
"...You just got lucky, that's all!"
Which was true. It was a situation where multiple factors had stacked into a stroke of luck.
The problem is that in every field of endeavor, the luckiest man alive is, by definition, the most skilled.
You need only look at the man who razes the ocean to a wasteland and then teabags his victims while declaring it was 'pure, dumb fortune'.
Noh In-seong had reached base on the third baseman's error. Two times on base today, at least — that should keep the hounds off his back, right?
Feeling somewhat relieved.
J-Lo was pulled from the game. There was nothing left to throw, and nothing good waiting for him if he kept throwing anyway.
He was already seething; there was no way he was going to pitch cleanly through this.
The opponent began cycling in their best relief arms, and the Doubles — whose bats had gone rotten across the board today — ground to a halt.
Noh In-seong thought about stealing second,
"Whoa... this guy is relentless."
But with the lefty picking off at exactly the same interval every time, refusing to give an inch, he shelved the idea.
He could gamble, but right now, one cold shower of a pickoff could end the game on the spot.
Crack—!!
[Base hit for Song Jin-wook! The runner on first rounds second and heads for third... safe at third!]
[Noh In-seong has been showing absolutely aggressive baserunning all day today, getting himself covered in dirt. Truly remarkable...]
[Judging by his usual behavior and the things that come out of his mouth, you'd never believe he was capable of this kind of effort. And yet — here we are.]
First and third, nobody out. The Doubles had the ultimate walk-off opportunity in Dustin's hands.
Tink—
"OH, SHIT!"
At two balls and two strikes, he finally lost his patience, flinched at a decoy pitch, and rolled it over into a ground ball.
[The shortstop gloves it — the throw home is late, so they go to second! Then to first! Double play!]
[And with both runners being so slow-footed, that's how it ends... haha.]
Noh In-seong crossed home plate, but the game would not end there.
Then Jo In-soo took his biggest cut of the night, and the Jamsil wall swallowed the ball whole for a flyout.
The game rolled into the top of the tenth. Extra innings.
"Ah, this is total bullshit."
Kim Seong-ju spat onto the field.
They'd had the game all but won, and now victory had evaporated right before their eyes. Everyone stood staring blankly at the diamond, hollowed out.
Ten minutes ago, everyone in that dugout had been living their best life,
convinced they'd find a way to close it out, hearts racing at the thought of heading home early to rest up for tomorrow's game.
At this point, you had to wonder what cosmic grudge the universe held against them.
And at the most important time, in the most important situation, at the most important moment — Noh In-seong.
The man had contributed magnificently to ruining the Grizzlies' entire roster's happy day.
Setting aside the matter of Noh In-seong stealing their happiness — the fact remained that only two innings now stood between them and the end of it all.
"But they're not bringing in their best relievers, are they? You'd think even in the worst case, they'd play for a tie."
"That's the problem. Honestly, the rest of their bullpen doesn't scare me much."
The Grizzlies' coaches and manager put their heads together.
Jeon In-soo ate innings well and had decent stamina, but he was barely back from shoulder surgery. So Dong-yeop had stamina, and only stamina — everything else was a daily roll of the dice, every single pitch a fresh throw of them. And Yeom Dong-goo was a rookie. Whatever he did, it was nerve-wracking.
Cho Hyo-jin would finish the tenth, and if trouble brewed, Kim Jin-hong would come in immediately.
Who knew that stretching this thing to an eleventh could favor their side so much?
"...Ah, damn it. Fine. Get our high-leverage guys ALL up! And for the eleventh, get Hoon-ie up too!"
Score one run by any means necessary, then pray the pitcher who'd just thrown could hold the line.
"Jin-hong stays on standby, Cho Hyo-jin shuts down this inning, and somebody just gets one hit. That's all we need!"
The two managers were running strategies so identical they might as well have been staring into a mirror.
[And that will do it. Yes — this one ends in a tie.]
[Eleven innings of brutal warfare, and in the end, nobody gets to smile. A bitterly unsatisfying finish for both sides.]
Even the way the two mirror-image managers trudged off in mourning was identical.
The Doubles, who had torched their entire high-leverage bullpen to scrape out a utterly useless tie and would now be shorthanded tomorrow.
And the Grizzlies, who had abused their starters so badly the rotation would need reshuffling.
Two fools had collided head-on, shattering the mirror between them, and all that remained was to cradle the broken shards and weep.
Though if you had to pick the side left feeling just a little dirtier about it, it would probably be the one that felt the extra innings had ended far too soon.
As the Doubles heaved a sigh of relief and the Grizzlies fumed, Noh In-seong's postgame interview did wonders for making that fury burn even hotter.
"I agree the tie rule is a completely pointless institution. But how exactly are you supposed to score more runs, then?"
"What? Well — no, I mean, you don't exactly have any more trustworthy pitchers left, do you?"
Setting aside the sheer audacity of a reporter whose opening move was to insult his own team's bullpen —
"You want me to sit here and watch us lose to a bunch of steroid-jacked punks? Then somebody's gotta go out there and handle it, don't they?"
— That way, I don't get tagged with the humiliation, after all.
The man whose hitting had been dog garbage all day had somehow survived on pure luck, strutted into a postgame interview, and was now openly taunting them.
It was the perfect recipe for driving the Grizzlies' fanbase into a blind rage.